enjoy himself famously among the great abundance of fish and game said to abound in that place, and that in the end he would return to us again, to rule over us in greater splendor than ever; as for his sweetheart or any of her like doing him any actual injury, the idea seemed so preposterous to me, that whenever an opportunity presented itself I did not fail to ridicule it to the utmost.  Still, in order to do my whole duty in the matter, I hastened to impress old Bill with the importance of his becoming acquainted with the antecedents of his lady-love, and thus saving himself from the possibility of a misstep.  But this counsel did no farther good than to bring a clouded brow to my dear old friend, and so I did not persist in it.  Indeed, we communed together but little more in any way; for very shortly after he resigned his place as our ‘boss,’ and left post-haste for the main-land.  Here, as was revealed to me in due season, he amazed the neighborhood by incontinently renting his farmstead to a son with whom he had been on indifferent terms for years; dispatching his daughter, who had heretofore acted as his housekeeper, off to a distant town to become an apprentice to a milliner’s trade; and stowing his clothes and a shot-bag of hard money which he was known to possess into a sailor’s chest, with which, together with his gun and a Methodist preacher, he again hurried off for the asylum of his beloved.  Arrived once more in the witching presence, he waited till evening (yet how he was constrained so to do is more than I can tell), and then, as we made it a duty to be gathered about him once more, the wedding took place.

The occasion was one of such interest, that the preacher could but make the most of it.  After the nuptial benediction had been pronounced, he straightway launched forth into a homily of such graciousness and force, that but few of us missed being forcibly wrought upon, while Mrs. Rose was stirred apparently to the depths of her being.  On the day succeeding the marriage, our light-hearted Benedict abandoned himself to another jollification.  But the next morning, a schooner headed in towards the beach, and, slackening the peaks of her sails, sent ashore a yawl, whose crew saluted Mrs. Rose as an old and familiar friend, and with whose apparition, without the least regard as to what shift we wreckers were to make, a great packing was begun in the house.  Bedsteads were taken down, beds were bundled up in sheets, crockery was thrust away in barrels, and all borne one after the other to the yawl, where the bride, with her potent parasol full spread, and pretending to shudder at the sight of the gently heaving breakers through which she was soon to pass, mincingly threw herself in the thick of the luggage, and old Bill mounted the stern, with his huge palm extended for a good-by shake.  ‘Good-by, old chap,’ said I, as I took his hand the last of all, ’good-by!  You’re not half mean enough to stay away from us forever; so in the meantime do your best to show the Hatteras boys what a nice thing it is to be somebody in the world!’ And thus the boat put off, and, reaching the schooner in a few moments, was hoisted to her decks.  In a few moments more the vessel had reset her sails, and, with a free wind, bore straight to the southward out of sight.